Bonus Content – Starfighter Command

Lily, London, United Kingdom

Lily, it’s Mia. The game is real. Jamie is on Velerion with Alexius. I’m leaving now with Kass. Finish the game. Darius will come for you.

I stared at the text Mia had sent me the other day, just as I had hundreds of times since then. I’d missed my chance. Apparently, I’d missed her because she hadn’t responded to anything I sent back after the first time. I’d asked her if this was a joke.

She had assured me she was serious. Texted, ‘See you on Velerion’.

I had absolutely no idea how she’d acquired my cell number. Except she was a cop, or a spy. Something along those lines. I knew she wouldn’t tell the truth, so I hadn’t asked. But she’d tracked down my cell number and sent me this one text. One.

Which meant, what? It was true? She was on another business trip to China without cell service?

Mia was analytical. She thought in black and white. I did not. While Mia was cool-headed, I was all heat. All emotion.

“Repressed emotion.” I glared at my grandmother’s ring where it had rested on my right hand since my sixteenth birthday, and her seventy-sixth. We shared the special day and I’d heard all my life that I’d been born on her sixtieth. As her favorite flower was the Lily, that had become my name. By all reports, she’d been overjoyed.

Every day since, she’d been a cool, reserved and judgmental matriarch. She ran our family, top to bottom, sorted my parents business and ran her own empire with an iron fist. Outbursts were not tolerated in her household.

Thank the Good Lord her estate was massive. Even then, I’d been grateful to leave for boarding school and hesitant to come back. My grandmother seemed to have been born in the wrong century, in my most humble opinion.

Boarding school was one thing. Going to another planet?

“This cannot be real.” But what if…

Mia was not one to joke. Curse like a sailor? Intimidate everyone we played against? Definitely. But she was not one to joke. Or lie, as far as I could tell.

Jamie had disappeared. Now Mia was gone as well. Interpol had asked me about the text. They’d hunted down her last message and knocked on my door a week ago.

I’d told them the truth. She was talking about a video game.

Now they probably believed Mia had suffered a psychotic break and was wandering on a street somewhere babbling about aliens and the Dark Fleet and Kass.

“Bloody hell.” What a fucking mess. She and Jamie might think me a dainty English rose. I was anything but. If they ever met me…

I stood, paced my bedroom. Think. Think!

Mia wouldn’t be cruel and text me that and leave me hanging. If she wrote it, she meant it. Jamie had disappeared. Mia had promised to find her. The text said she had. On Velerion!

On a fake planet from a video game!

I stared at my TV, at the game controller on the coffee table. Was that the access I truly needed to get to my friends? Was finishing the game the only way I’d ever meet them in person?

Hell, was there actually a possibility I would meet Darius?

I looked at the ceiling, set my hands on my hips and took a deep breath. I was insane. Darius. The hot Velerion Titan, the man I’d chosen to be my in game partner, the sexy alien I secretly lusted after. Jamie and Mia weren’t the only two who had a crush and craving for their digital teammates.

I wanted to find Jamie. I wanted to find Mia. I wanted Darius. All I had to do was finish the game, Mia said.

Finish the game.

Darius will come for you.

I flopped down on my sofa. What if Darius did come for me and didn’t like what he found? I wasn’t sure if I could handle that kind of rejection. I had been obsessed with him for months, since I started the game. I didn’t even notice real, flesh and blood human men anymore. Didn’t even look. And that made me the biggest loser of all.

But what if he was real and he didn’t want me…

“Bugger.”

I picked up the controller, entered the game. I had one mission left to beat. One. Might take me a few tries if my nerves blew it for me.

Finish the game. Darius would come for me. Take me to Velerion. Meet Jamie. Meet Mia. Fuck my brains out.

That was what I wanted. I did. No more debating. No more fear. I could be like my character in the game. Fearless. Powerful.

I popped up, ran into my closet to grab my suitcase. If I was going to Velerion, I needed a bag packed.

Then I’d win the Starfighter Training Academy. I would. After I packed my sexiest panties.